To John Brazier Popular Forest, August 24, 1819

SIR,

-- The acknowledgment of your favor of July 15th, and
thanks for the Review which it covered of Mr. Pickering's Memoir on
the Modern Greek, have been delayed by a visit to an occasional but
distant residence from Monticello, and to an attack here of
rheumatism which is just now moderating. I had been much pleased
with the memoir, and was much also with your review of it. I have
little hope indeed of the recovery of the ancient pronunciation of
that finest of human languages, but still I rejoice at the attention
the subject seems to excite with you, because it is an evidence that
our country begins to have a taste for something more than merely as
much Greek as will pass a candidate for clerical ordination.

You ask my opinion on the extent to which classical learning
should be carried in our country. A sickly condition permits me to
think, and a rheumatic hand to write too briefly on this litigated
question. The utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and
Latin languages are, first, as models of pure taste in writing. To
these we are certainly indebted for the national and chaste style of
modern composition which so much distinguishes the nations to whom
these languages ae familiar. Without these models we should probably
have continued the inflated style of our northern ancestors, or the
hyperbolical and vague one of the east. Second. Among the values of
classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and
Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should
not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead
of all those addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more
indebted to my father for this than for all the other luxuries his
cares and affections have placed within my reach; and more now than
when younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources.
When the decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the
mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of ennui, and become
sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all
sooner or later to descend. Third. A third value is in the stores
of real science deposited and transmitted us in these languages,
to-wit: in history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural
history, &c.

But to whom are these things useful? Certainly not to all men.
There are conditions of life to which they must be forever estranged,
and there are epochs of life too, after which the endeavor to attain
them would be a great misemployment of time. Their acquisition
should be the occupation of our early years only, when the memory is
susceptible of deep and lasting impressions, and reason and judgment
not yet strong enough for abstract speculations. To the moralist
they are valuable, because they furnish ethical writings highly and
justly esteemed: although in my own opinion, the moderns are far
advanced beyond them in this line of science, the divine finds in the
Greek language a translation of his primary code, of more importance
to him than the original because better understood; and, in the same
language, the newer code, with the doctrines of the earliest fathers,
who lived and wrote before the simple precepts of the founder of this
most benign and pure of all systems of morality became frittered into
subtleties and mysteries, and hidden under jargons incomprehensible
to the human mind. To these original sources he must now, therefore,
return, to recover the virgin purity of his religion. The lawyer
finds in the Latin language the system of civil law most conformable
with the principles of justice of any which has ever yet been
established among men, and from which much has been incorporated into
our own. The physician as good a code of his art as has been given
us to this day. Theories and systems of medicine, indeed, have been
in perpetual change from the days of the good Hippocrates to the days
of the good Rush, but which of them is the true one? the present, to
be sure, as long as it is the present, but to yield its place in turn
to the next novelty, which is then to become the true system, and is
to mark the vast advance of medicine since the days of Hippocrates.
Our situation is certainly benefited by the discovery of some new and
very valuable medicines; and substituting those for some of his with
the treasure of facts, and of sound observations recorded by him
(mixed to be sure with anilities of his day) and we shall have nearly
the present sum of the healing art. The statesman will find in these
languages history, politics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of
country, to which he must add the sciences of his own day, for which
of them should be unknown to him? And all the sciences must recur to
the classical languages for the etymon, and sound understanding of
their fundamental terms. For the merchant I should not say that the
languages are a necessary. Ethics, mathematics, geography, political
economy, history, seem to constitute the immediate foundations of his
calling. The agriculturist needs ethics, mathematics, chemistry and
natural philosophy. The mechanic the same. To them the languages
are but ornament and comfort. I know it is often said there have
been shining examples of men of great abilities in all the businesses
of life, without any other science than what they had gathered from
conversations and intercourse with the world. But who can say what
these men would not have been had they started in the science on the
shoulders of a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or a
Newton? To sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the
classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to
all the sciences.

I am warned by my aching fingers to close this hasty sketch,
and to place here my last and fondest wishes for the advancement of
our country in the useful sciences and arts, and my assurances of
respect and esteem for the Reviewer of the Memoir on modern Greek.